


run away with me, they don't understand

by sentientaltype



Series: maybe i've always been this kind [1]
Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/F, First Time, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Pre-Canon, Underage Drinking, Underage Sex, Underage Smoking, beth cassidy is my baby, i haven't read the book, this pretty much fits in TV canon but i took a few liberties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:15:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23537482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentientaltype/pseuds/sentientaltype
Summary: "Addy would never leave her. Addy wouldn’t break her heart, not the way she feels right now. Beth believes that.Somewhere, somehow—something is telling Beth that she’s wrong."Or Beth Cassidy, in and out and all the way through.rated M for smut, language, implied/ref rape, drinking, drug use.title is from "Lana (ft. Clairo)" by SASSY 009.
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon
Series: maybe i've always been this kind [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706350
Comments: 22
Kudos: 156





	run away with me, they don't understand

**Author's Note:**

> here is my attempt at a beth character study. i found her so enthralling and fascinating when i watched the show, so i went ahead and wrote this.
> 
> i took a few liberties with some of the facts, but if you don't look too closely it meshes well with TV canon. hope you guys enjoy!

If she thinks really hard, strains her brain, Beth can conjure up a memory of a warm summer evening in Sutton Grove. She’s sitting on her swing set, going back and forth, back and forth while her dad flips burgers and her mom stirs a pitcher filled to the brim with lemonade.

Beth is only five, jumping off the seat and running as fast as her little legs will carry her until she collides with her father’s shins.   
Bert scoops her up and lifts her over his head, spinning in circles. Her mother shouts, scolding Bert for being so reckless. He lowers little Beth to the grass, concentrating on grilling.

If she closes her eyes and thinks hard enough, Beth can feel the summer breeze blowing through her chestnut curls, the grass beneath her bare feet. She can taste the lemonade her mom made, cold and sweet with a tang that made Beth pucker her lips.

Her first memory. Five years old, the first thing she remembers. 

Such a beautiful first memory, with so much ugliness to follow. 

***

Beth is coming up on six when she meets Addy for the first time, on the multicolored mat laid on the floor of their kindergarten classroom. She sees Addy, sitting criss-cross applesauce in a pink and white floral dress, and Beth can’t resist what overtakes her. She crosses the room, plops herself right down next to Addy and gnaws her teeth into the tan skin of her shoulder.

Addy screams, loud enough to alert the entire class. Tears spring from the corners of Addy’s eyes as the teacher rushes over, scolding Beth with a firm finger.

Beth doesn’t hear any of it. Her gaze is fixated on the crying girl in front of her, feeling power spill out with the saltwater, and she wiggles past her teacher to go to Addy, placing the shyest of kisses on the mark her teeth left. 

They’re only five, but Beth is already soothing Addy’s pain —pain that she caused.

Later, Beth finds Addy sitting alone on the swingset and launches, without being prompted, into a recount of her trip to the mall with her mother the weekend before. It’s meant to get Addy’s attention, to make her  _ see _ Beth, and it works, because the two are inseparable from that day on. 

Beth is proud to call Addy her best friend. She tells everyone who will listen: teachers, classmates, her parents.  _ Addy’s my best friend _ . Beth wears the title like a jewel-encrusted crown, Addy  _ her  _ girl no matter where they go.

They’re seven, gallivanting in the thick grass of the recess field, where hollow-stalked dandelions sprout from beds of green, dotting the expanse of the field like the wings of a ladybug. Addy is picking them, one by one, adding them to the pile gripped tightly in her fingers. 

Beth has been practicing her round-off, having perfected her cartwheel just days before. She can’t  _ quite  _ get the timing right, one leg always coming in a hair before the other. She babbles on her usual nonsense: complaints about their eccentric art teacher who insists on forcing Beth to draw things she doesn’t like; stories of her parents’ wedding as Beth sees it through their family photo album.

Addy is unmoving, sitting against the fence, fashioning something out of the dandelions she picked. 

When Beth finally approaches, Addy holds up her work. She’s weaved the flowers into an intricate-looking crown, the yellow petals facing the outside of the circle.

“I made it for you,” Addy says shyly, standing up and placing the crown on Beth’s head.

Beth gasps. “For me?” She shakes her head a little, testing the structural integrity of the contraption, and Addy smiles triumphantly when the crown doesn’t budge. 

“You look pretty,” Addy whispers, like it’s a secret no one else can be privy to.

Beth’s heart swells in her chest, and she leans in to kiss Addy’s cheek. 

When she gets home, prancing into the kitchen with a smile that makes her cheeks ache, Beth is eager to show her mother.

“Mommy, look what Addy made me!” she propels herself into the living room, spinning in front of the couch where her mother lies. “It’s a crown made of dandelions. Isn’t it pretty?”

Lana sits up slowly, all sluggish limbs and glassy eyes in a way Beth has grown familiar with but still doesn’t understand. “Bethy, take that off,” she says, voice hoarse. Lana reaches for the crown and takes it off Beth’s head, throwing it behind her haphazardly. “Dandelions are weeds, babygirl.”

Beth hesitates, biting her bottom lip to keep from crying as she runs after Addy’s creation. Here her mother sits, telling her that the beautiful flowers Addy had picked for her are nothing but mistakes, intruders of the natural ecosystem of Sutton Grove Elementary’s recess field. 

She wonders how something so perfect could be bad. 

***

On a particularly scorching day in the spring of fifth grade, Beth jumps off the last step of the school bus, backs up to the curb and waves goodbye to Addy, whose head is hanging out the window like a dog on a road trip.

She skips all the way home and gets excited when she sees her dad’s car in the driveway. The front door is ajar, so Beth slips inside, but she immediately wishes she had taken Addy up on her invite to practice back walkovers. 

Shouting echoes off the walls and marbled tile floors, followed by the sharp sound of something breaking. Beth watches from the foyer as shards of glass slide across the floor. She tiptoes toward the kitchen, peeking her head around to find her parents arguing loud enough to alert the neighbors. 

“How long, Bert?” her mother screams in his face. “How long have you been screwing her? Tell me!”

Beth’s eyes are drawn to the handmade glass vase, which lays in pieces on the floor, flowers slack and wilting against the tile. 

“Since they moved in!” Bert replies, exasperated.

Beth is crying, but she doesn’t know why. 

“That was a  _ year  _ ago!” Lana says, and it sounds like she’s losing her mind, slowly but surely. She leans against the island countertop, head in her hands, before standing up again. “Get the hell out.”

“You can’t kick me out,” Bert scoffs, incredulous. “I pay for this place!”

“You can pay for it from across the fucking street, you lying bastard,” Beth’s mother spits, chasing Bert out of the kitchen. 

Beth scrambles out of the way, making herself flat against the wall as though it will make her disappear from view.   
Bert rushes toward the door, Lana hot on his heels. 

Beth watches as his father yanks the door open and takes one last look behind him, and-

His stare weighs more than anything Beth can carry. 

Her mother slams the door in his face, turning and sliding down the back of it.

“Babygirl,” she whispers when she sees Beth standing in the shadows opposite her. “Oh, my baby.”

Beth rushes to her mother’s side, reaching out to wipe the tears from her cheeks. She sits quietly while her mother sobs, body wracking with effort. Beth can’t stand the sound of her crying, it makes her ears burn.

With little warning, Lana stands up and stalks into the kitchen, careful to avoid the shards of glass that litter the floor. 

Beth follows tentatively, but when her eyes fall upon her mother unscrewing the cap of a Grey Goose bottle, she keeps walking, up the stairs and into her room. 

There is so much in the world that Beth doesn’t know. So much she can’t understand, can’t control. It makes her blood boil. Beth lets the pieces come together in her mind, like they’d been shuffled and scattered by the raw intensity of the scene.  _ Dad cheated on Mom.  _ She hears her father’s voice, her mother’s, battling for dominance even in her mind.  _ He’s been screwing the woman across the street. For a year. _ Beth has an eerie feeling that Bert crossed the street and would never be coming back. 

She wants to be angry with her father, but Beth thinks of her mother’s coldness, her tendency to skirt the affections of her husband and daughter, and she wonders if Bert is to blame. So much she doesn’t know. It drives Beth mad. 

All night, Beth is in a staring contest with the ceiling. She doesn’t toss and turn, hardly even moves. When she hears footsteps outside her door, her eyes close instinctively.

Beth hears her door creak open. She doesn’t have to open her eyes to know her mother is watching her from the doorway; Beth can hear her little gasps of breath, the remnants of a long day of crying. She knew from the day she landed wrong in Addy’s backyard, her wrist cracking under the weight of her body. Beth had cried all the way to the hospital, in the back of Faith Hanlon’s police car, head cradled in Addy’s hands. 

The door closes again, and footsteps recede, leaving Beth all alone again. 

For a moment, she thinks she doesn’t have to be. She has Addy. 

Addy would never leave her. Addy wouldn’t break her heart, not the way she feels right now. Beth believes that.

Somewhere, somehow—something is telling Beth that she’s wrong. 

***

With Bert gone—across the street, shacked up with his fiancée and soon-to-be stepdaughter—Beth is left with her mother, an alcoholic who grows more insufferable by the day, and an unfillable hole the size of Texas right in the middle of her. 

It’s not her heart that feels like it’s missing, but rather a huge chunk of her midsection. Her gut feels like it’s been snatched clean away, dangling in front of her but just out of reach. 

When she tells Addy the tale, she comforts Beth by telling her she isn’t alone, that she never will be as long as Addy is around. Beth wants to make her promise to never leave. She itches to, mouth opening and closing again, keeping the words trapped in her throat.

Beth feels like she’s bleeding—she feels it all the time, seeping through her clothes, dripping onto the floor, splattering when she tumbles in Addy’s driveway. It feels like she’s lost two people at once. Beth can  _ never  _ hurt that way again. 

When she’s eleven, Beth learns to put up walls. She gets to work immediately, laying brick after brick stuck together between layers of concrete. She seals up the ever-present hole in her gut, and it holds everything inside, where it belongs. Beth vows to never let anything get out, nor let anything—any _ one _ —in. 

When they’re eleven, Beth and Addy graduate from elementary school in the recess field, walking across the grass to accept their mass-printed diplomas. Beth watches as Addy accepts her diploma from the principal in her red sundress, smiling from ear to ear as she comes to stand next to Beth. 

They’re in middle school now, graduated to a whole new level of cool. Beth invites Addy to her house for a sleepover, but Addy declines, citing a family dinner with her mom and Michael Slocum. She watches Addy walk away, a brick tumbling from the top of her sturdy wall. 

When Beth scans the crowd for a familiar face and doesn’t find one, nothing happens. Beth walks the mile and a half from school to home, alone, harrowed by the thought that Addy Hanlon might be the only thing that could ever break her.

Middle school brings a whole host of changes to Beth’s life, beginning with a late September day during gym class, which she spends hip-checking and swatting at balls during their basketball unit. 

Addy, however, seems to show some prowess at the sport. She keeps up easily with the seventh graders across the gym when they face off in a match.

“When’d you get so good at sports, Hanlon?” Beth asks as Addy gets subbed off the court. She slides into the space to Beth’s right, leaning her head against the bleachers in exhaustion. 

“I play with Slocum in his driveway sometimes,” Addy replies with a shrug.

Beth can’t help but study Addy’s face; the slope of her nose, the freckle on her cheek just below her eye, the smooth skin of her neck as a drop of sweat rolls down and collides with her collarbone. She’s covered in a thin layer of sweat, making her skin glow in the afternoon sun filtering through the old field house skylights.

“I think I might try out for the rec team,” Addy says, eyes never leaving the ball as it travels from player to player, down the court and into the hoop. 

Beth feels a noxious mixture of anger and fear bubble in her stomach. Addy joining the basketball team means less time for Beth, new friends and new experiences; it means leaving Beth behind. 

“No fucking way,” Beth shoots back. “Haven’t you heard? Basketball is for lesbos. We’ve gotta strive for the cheer squad.”

Addy turns to face her, puzzled. “But, cheer doesn’t start until high school. I could still-”

“What, play until then? Uh-uh.” Beth crosses her arms over her chest, ignoring the panicked thrum of her heart, threatening to burst. “If you want to be great, you have to dedicate yourself to your craft. And you can’t have more than one.”

“That’s dumb,” Addy huffs, but she doesn’t press the issue, electing to pout instead. Even though she’s mad, Addy still takes Beth’s word as gospel, like she always has.

“Come on.” Beth reaches for one of Addy’s hands, lifting it to her mouth and leaving a feather-light kiss. “You really wanna be away from me every day?”

Addy cracks a smile, and before long, both girls are grinning ear to ear. “No, I don’t.”

Beth nods, the incessant pounding of her pulse slowly calming down. She doesn’t let go of Addy’s hand, interlacing their fingers until their gym teacher summons Addy back onto the court.

Addy stretches their arms as far as they’ll go before finally letting go of Beth’s hand, but the pouting look in her eyes says  _ I don’t wanna leave you  _ and Beth is wondering if it’s normal to love your best friend this much—so much that your heart pounds when they look at you, and you can’t bear the thought of losing them, and you don’t want them spending a second with anyone else. 

Watching Addy steal the ball from a kid nearly twice her size, Beth decides it’s not normal, because Addy is special, and Addy is  _ hers.  _

***

Just before the start of eighth grade, in the height of August, Mickey Lawson throws a back to school pool party in his backyard. For once, Beth and Addy don’t show up together, because Addy had a dentist appointment that morning. 

“Beth!” RiRi squeals from the front lawn as Beth pulls up on her bike, steering into the driveway and propping it up against the garage door. “OMG, where’s Addy?”

“Dentist,” Beth replies curtly. “She’s coming soon.” 

“You good?” RiRi asks her, and Beth nods. “Okay, well, come on!” RiRi leads her through the fence gate and into Mickey’s backyard, which already houses at least four dozen people. 

Her mood is sour because of exactly this: she hates practically everyone here and only agreed to go to this party because Addy begged her to. In Beth’s basement—which she had converted into her own personal den over the summer—Addy brought up the topic of Mickey’s party, and Beth shot it down. But it seemed Addy had been expecting that, because she got down on her knees in front of the couch and started begging in earnest. She has to hand it to her; Addy knows exactly how to get what she wants from Beth. All it takes are the puppy dog eyes, her full bottom lip jutting out in a pout, and Beth is putty in her hands. 

Addy could have been begging for a trip to the local crack house, and Beth would have obliged while feigning irritation. She’s so  _ fucking  _ whipped for Addy, and she doesn’t even care, as long as no one else knows.

She snags a soda from the cooler and peels her tank top off her body, tossing it into the grass. Beth follows RiRi to a series of lounge chairs, where Brianna, Cori and Emily are laid out in their bikinis. It takes a moment before her presence registers, but once it does, the girls shoot up from their seats, offering the space to Beth. Power rushes through her veins, and she smiles, because she  _ owns  _ them. Her girls, her band of bitches. Beth watches the cliques break out; nerds gathering by the snack table, jocks wrestling in the pool, and the know-it-alls sitting on the grassy hill in a cultish circle. 

It all looks dull and grey in Beth’s eyes, and she doesn’t quite understand why until a tall figure breaches the fence gate. 

It’s Addy—clad in nothing but her crimson bikini and a pair of cutoff shorts Beth is positive are hers—and she’s strutting through the party like she owns it. 

Beth feels her heart race as Addy approaches. She’s the only one of the girls who’s seen Addy all summer, after the serial killer scare shook the town and Faith kept her locked inside for weeks. The summer did a number on Addy’s figure, tripling her cup size and filling out her hips in a matter of months. It makes the boy’s heads swing in pursuit of her, which in turn makes Beth want to bare her teeth and growl until they run away in fear. 

“Hey, guys,” Addy says with a smile. Her gaze darts across the girls, whose jaws are hanging off their hinges.

“Damn, Addy!” Cori cries, taking a swig from Emily’s flask that’s been going around for a few minutes. “Where the hell did this-” she gestures vaguely in Addy’s direction, “-come from?”

“Uh, I-” Addy hesitates, staring at the floor. 

Beth can see the girls ogling her, and she seethes with envy. It’s nothing she hasn’t seen already, amid many slumber parties and dress-up sessions in Lana’s closet, but Beth can’t stand the blush on Addy’s cheeks.

“Went out and got yourself a brand new rack, didn’t you, Hanlon?” Beth taunts, standing up to face Addy. “That’s where you were all summer? Under the  _ knife _ ?” Beth punctuates her words with a sharp poke at Addy’s stomach, making the taller girl wince and flinch away.

“Shut up, Beth, you know that’s not true,” Addy protests, face burning red to match her bikini. 

Beth reaches out to cup Addy’s tits over the crimson fabric. “Wow, they did a good job,” she snickers, weighing them in her hands. “They feel so real.” She can barely contain the primality in her grip, fighting the urge to rip the fabric off and make Addy scream her name in front of everyone. 

“Fuck off!” Addy swats Beth’s hands away and runs off into the house, but Beth gets an eyeful of her tears as she steps through the doorway.

Beth looks around at the girls, and they avoid her gaze as if Beth is a modern Medusa, threatening to turn them to stone if they look her in the eye. After a moment, the dust settles, and the girls go back to passing the flask around and chattering about stupid shit that Beth doesn’t care about. She’s thinking about one thing only. 

“Hey, did you see a crying girl come through here?” Beth enters the kitchen and asks a woman who she assumes is Mickey’s mother.

“Oh, I think she went into the bathroom,” the woman says, pointing to a door down the hall. 

Beth doesn’t hesitate, heads straight for the door and knocks sharply. “Addy?”

“Leave me alone, Beth,” Addy says through the door, and it’s obvious she’s been crying.

She grips the doorknob and turns, but the door doesn’t open. “Addy, let me in.”

“No!” A bang on the door.

Beth jumps at the thud of what she assumes is Addy’s fist. “Okay, well I’m just gonna sit out here until you open the door.” She feels cruel, wicked even, knowing that she’s the reason Addy is crying right now, knowing she just embarrassed her in front of their friends. But the rush of it all—the high Beth gets as a byproduct of coaxing tears from Addy’s eyes—makes it impossible for her to stop. 

“I’m not opening it.”

“Not even if I sing your least favorite song?” Beth asks, leaning against the door. She’s certain this will work.

“Beth, don’t-” Addy tries to say, but it’s too late because Beth has already started wailing the first verse of “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” one of few songs Beth knows Addy absolutely cannot stand. 

“Country roooooooads, take me hooooome,” Beth sings off-key at the top of her lungs. “To the plaaaaaace, I beloooooong! West Virginiaaaaaa-”

The door falls open under Beth’s back, sending her falling to the floor.

“You’re so fucking annoying,” Addy huffs, but this is the best part of it all. 

Beth climbs into Addy’s lap and wraps her arms around her shoulders, kissing her cheek and all along her jaw until a smile returns to Addy’s face. The rush of making Addy hurt is one thing, but soothing the pain is something else altogether.

Beth feels like she’s gluing something precious back together, repairing a fissure without ever leaving a scar. She’s terrified that one day, she’ll break Addy beyond repair. 

***

They’re thirteen now, with one year left until high school, and Beth is intent on running things when she gets there.

It’s the second week of school, and Beth is watching Addy line her notebooks up in her locker, pulling out her trigonometry textbook.

“Let’s ditch,” Beth says, tugging on Addy’s arm.

“What? Beth, come on, we have Trig,” Addy replies, trying to twist out of Beth’s vice grip. 

“It’s just review from Algebra 1, and you know it,” Beth presses. “Come on, I know a great spot.”

Addy eyes her skeptically, but lets herself be dragged to the back door down an abandoned hallway, where a pipe burst and flooded the classrooms years ago. They exit with a view of the high school’s football field, which takes up the space between the two schools. 

Hand in hand, they dart across the track, climb the hill and slip under the bleachers. Beth tugs Addy further out of potential passerbys’ sight lines. 

“I got you something,” Beth reaches in her backpack and retrieves a metal case, from which she produces a joint.

“Is that weed?” Addy whispers the last words like they’re in a bugged room.

“Mhm.” Beth holds the joint to her lips and lights it, pulling the smoke into her lungs and holding it for a moment before exhaling. “Here,” she says, offering the joint to Addy.

She shakes her head. “I’m good.”

“Oh, come on, live a little!” Beth lifts the marijuana closer to Addy’s lips.

“You know this is peer pressure, right?” 

“What are you gonna do? Call your mommy and have her arrest me?” Beth gawks at her. “Don’t be such a bitch, Hanlon.”

Addy is bobbing and weaving to avoid Beth, but it’s all fruitless, because Beth grips her neck with a firm hand and sticks the joint between her lips, watching with wide eyes as Addy inhales and promptly chokes on the smoke. 

It sends a shiver down Beth’s spine, watching Addy cough and splutter like her gag reflex has been activated. She’s drunk on the power, or maybe just buzzed from the weed, but Beth wants to make Addy gag herself. 

She’s surprised when Addy snatches the joint from her fingers and puts it to her lips again, drawing more smoke this time and holding it well. Addy eyes her with a brow cocked as she exhales, like she’s trying to prove something, and Beth considers it proven. 

“Hey ladies,” a voice echoes under the metal of the bleachers. Beth peers down the stretch, where a trio of boys in letterman jackets are coming closer. “You two lost?”

“Nope,” Beth stands up, staring down the blond boy in the front. “We know exactly where we are.”

“Well, I’m throwing a party at my place tonight, after the game.” Mystery Guy shrugs nonchalantly. “You’d be more than welcome.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Beth sees Addy stand up and take up the space behind her, and her heart swells at the display of obedience. Beth never has to ask, and Addy is by her side. 

She snatches the pen out from behind the blonde’s ear, scribbling her phone number onto the skin of his palm.

“Maybe we’ll see you there,” Beth says with a bite of her lip. She watches Mystery Guy give her a long once-over, letting him get halfway through before turning on her heeling and strutting into the sunshine.

“Hey, we’re not going to that, are we?” Addy rushes to catch up.

“Did you get my weed?” Beth ignores her. “Or did you just leave it there for the baseball dorks to snatch up?”

Addy holds the half-smoked joint up, as well as Beth’s lighter. “I’m not going to that party with you, Beth.”

The stern quality to Addy’s tone is one Beth doesn’t hear often. Normally Addy is like fresh clay in Beth’s warm hands, soft and easy to mold, but now she feels rigid, like week-old pottery scraps that have been sitting on the counter for too long.

“Why not?” Beth asks simply, slowing her pace until she stops and sits on the grass by the scoreboard. Sometimes, she has to work hard to get Addy on her side, using words of logic and reason on top of emotional tactics. Other times, Addy unravels her own argument by revealing her complete  _ lack _ of argument.

“I have homework,” Addy tries, but Beth can tell she doesn’t have the guts to hold out on this one. Some days, like today, Beth feels insatiable—like she has such unadulterated control over Addy that it isn’t enough to satisfy her anymore, like maybe nothing ever will. 

“We’ve been to one class today,” Beth counters. “If it’ll make you feel better, we can go back to my house and read the Trig textbook before we go.”

Addy’s eyes light up at the sound of a compromise. These are rare coming from Beth. Ordinarily, it’s her way or the highway, but she really  _ does  _ want Addy to feel good about going to a high school party. Beth almost dares to think that she always wants Addy to feel good, but that would be a lie, and she can’t bear to lie to herself like that. 

They do go back to Beth’s house, but their backpacks are tossed haphazardly by the back door in favor of back handsprings in the backyard. The sun beats down on their skin, and it reminds Beth all too much of simpler times in this same place, her family intact and her heart unbroken.

But now, Addy is here, and she makes it better.

After falling on her ass for the millionth time, Beth feels her phone vibrate where it’s tucked away in her bra. She pulls it out and smiles victoriously at the text.

_ Hey, it’s Colin. U want the addy for tonight? _

To Beth’s dismay, Addy asks if they’re going to watch the football game. She’s annoyed that she even has to say it, because of course they’re not going, they need time to get ready for the party. Beth spends hours digging through her closet, throwing an assortment of mini skirts and crop tops in Addy’s direction. When she finally rises from the depths of the clothing piles, the bathroom door is shut.  _ Addy’s already changing.  _ Beth can’t help the scowl etching its way into her face—Addy shouldn’t need to change in the bathroom, she’s Beth’s girl, and they don’t hide anything from each other. 

Addy has taken power back, and Beth has to clench every muscle in her body to keep from forcibly ripping it away. She steadies her hands by flitting through the clothes on the floor, settling on a blue skirt and black tank top.

Once she’s dressed, Beth bangs on the bathroom door. “Open up, Hanlon! My makeup is in there!”

The lock turns and the door swings open, revealing Addy in an all red ensemble bent over the countertop with liquid eyeliner in her hands. Heat rushes through Beth’s body at the sight of her best friend. 

“Let me do that,” Beth says, boosting herself onto the counter and taking the eyeliner from Addy’s hand. She holds onto Addy’s shoulder to steady herself, dragging the black ink across her eyelid in a smooth motion. Years of sitting in front of her mother’s full-length mirror practicing different looks have brought Beth here.

Their faces are inches apart, and Beth is furious that she’s doing Addy’s eyeliner right now, because it means focusing on only one part of her best friend’s face when all she wants to do is move two inches lower and-

“Are you done?” Addy asks, and it’s because Beth’s hand is hanging in midair, the second eye still unfinished.

“Hold still,” Beth counters, focusing her attention again. “There,” she says, drawing her thumbs under both lines to smudge the edges. Addy’s breathing is irregular, her skin flushed, and Beth burns the image of Addy coyly biting her lip into her brain.

“Thanks,” Addy breathes out, admiring Beth’s work in the mirror. “Want me to do yours?”

Beth shakes her head with a laugh. “I’ll pass. Don’t wanna look like a raccoon.”

“You’d pull it off.” Addy digs through Beth’s expensive makeup collection until she finds a red lipstick to match her outfit.

Beth rolls her eyes as she blends her foundation, hoping it masks the blush creeping up her cheeks. It doesn’t help that Addy looks drop dead gorgeous, the skirt fabric hugging her waist in all the right ways, and Beth has to check the corners of her mouth for drool. 

Blond Colin’s house turns out to be a short walk away, so at half past ten, Beth and Addy slip out of the house and onto the street, already giddy from the shots of vodka Beth had poured from one of her mother’s bottles. Beth had been nervous all night—worried that Addy would try to change her mind and force Beth to resort to extraordinary measures of pressure to convince her.

None of it ever came. Addy was happy as a clam all night, hardly even protesting when Beth raided Lana’s liquor cabinet. 

She couldn’t help but wonder if any of it had to do with her, and the fact that it was just Beth and Addy all night. Beth would never admit it, but that’s her favorite way to spend the day.

They walk down the dark street hand in hand while Addy recounts a story she’d heard from Cori the day before. Beth has already heard it, but she smiles and laughs in all the right places because it makes Addy smile too. 

Even from a block away, Beth can hear rap music, and she can tell which house it’s coming from: the one with the flashing lights pouring through the slats of window blinds. 

Beth doesn’t knock, just pushes the door open and waltzes in, basking amongst the inebriated teenagers bustling around the living room. 

“Hey, you guys made it!” Colin emerges from the kitchen, already slurring his words. “Can I offer you two ladies a drink?”

Addy steps further inside, closing the door behind her. Her eyes are wide, taking it all in, and Beth follows her gaze.

All the furniture has been shoved up against the walls to create a large dance floor, where dozens of people are dancing and grinding. A recliner in the corner houses a half-naked girl straddling a football player. Two blondes with bows in their hair—who Beth can only assume are cheerleaders—snort a line of white powder through a rolled-up dollar bill. 

“Yeah, we’ll take drinks,” Beth says, and Colin saunters back into the kitchen. When she turns around, it’s easy to identify the apprehension in Addy’s expression. She’s out of her depth, maybe scared, and it’s Beth’s job to acclimate her.

When Colin returns with two Red Solo cups filled with dark liquid, Beth plucks them from his grasp and turns her back to him, her only focus on getting her best friend drunk enough to have a good time. She holds Addy’s cup up to her lips and tips it back, back, back—until Addy is jerking away and clearing her throat. Beth downs her own cup in two gulps before dragging Addy further into the living room, where they melt away into the sea of bodies undulating to the music. 

An upbeat song fades into a slower one, but the beat is hypnotic and it makes Beth pull Addy’s back flush to her front, hands creasing the fabric covering Addy’s hips. 

Addy is shy at first, but Beth drives a rhythm into her until they’re swaying in sync and Addy is grinding into Beth’s abdomen. 

The air in the room runs thick and hot, like a damp July day out at Lanvers Peak after a long day of rain. Beth can barely breathe. The visual alone—Addy half bent over drunkenly grinding her ass into Beth’s hips—is enough to make her body burn from head to toe. She leans forward and presses a kiss to the back of Addy’s neck, and another one along her back.

She doesn’t know how long it goes on for, but eventually Addy turns to face her and offers to get them more drinks, not even waiting for Beth’s reply before she darts into the kitchen.

Beth stands in the middle of the living room, dumbfounded and wondering if Addy really is getting drinks or if she’s running home as fast as her legs will carry her. She can barely stand the thought of Addy leaving, so she ducks her head into the dining room, where a half-dozen partygoers are grinding weed and rolling joints.

“You want in?” A goth girl in the back of the room asks her, and she takes a seat next to the guy holding a finished joint in lieu of an answer. He holds it up to her lips and lights it, and Beth inhales the smoke like it’s breathing new life into her lungs. 

Beth is exhaling her second puff when her neck starts to burn, the way it always does when Addy is staring at her. And sure enough, when she turns, Addy is leaning against the door frame, a cup in each hand.

“You coming?” Beth pats the seat next to her and offers her the joint. 

Addy holds it gingerly between her fingers and takes what Beth would normally denounce as a “pussy hit.” For some reason, tonight, Beth doesn’t think she’d take pleasure in tearing Addy down, so she just watches her best friend take another hit of the drug before passing it back to Beth.

“Do blowbacks,” a shaggy-haired kid calls from the back corner of the dining room. Addy’s brows quirk in confusion, and Beth reaches a thumb up to smooth the worry lines in her forehead.

“Relax, I’ll show you,” she says quietly, trying to shake the shyness that envelops her words. She pulls the smoke into her mouth and places a hand on Addy’s jaw, bringing her face closer until she can blow the smoke between Addy’s lips. Beth is careful not to touch, terrified of what it would do to Addy—terrified of what it would do to  _ her. _

Addy seems to put it together, inhaling the rebreathed smoke and tilting her head up to blow it towards the ceiling. She’s grinning from ear to ear, and Beth wonders if maybe, just maybe, Addy wouldn’t have minded Beth kissing her.

They don’t know what time it is, but they’re many drinks and a joint deep into this party when Beth decides it’s time to get Addy home. She hoists her best friend’s arm over her shoulder and they walk back to Beth’s house like that, Addy stumbling and giggling nonsense while Beth makes sure she doesn’t trip on a pothole. 

She fumbles with her key when they reach the back door, but Addy shoves the handle down and almost falls into the house, Beth snaking her hands around Addy’s waist to hold her up.

“Easy there,” Beth chides with a smile, slowly walking Addy into the lounge. She realizes that the odds of getting Addy up the stairs and into her room are slim, so she grabs a blanket from the floor and dumps it on the arm of the couch.

Addy falls less than gracefully onto the leather couch, all drunken giggles and pink cheeks. She reaches her arms out for Beth, pouting like a baby whose mother just put them down for a nap. “C’mere,” she mumbles. 

There’s no point in resisting, because Beth knows she’s going to climb into Addy’s lap sooner or later, it’s just a matter of when. So Beth takes Addy’s hands and straddles her hips, leaning down until their faces are inches apart. She looks on, and Addy is doe eyed and vulnerable under Beth’s touch, her fingertips trailing up and down Addy’s arms, over and over. 

“Psst,” Addy says.

“What?”

Addy leans up and cups a hand over Beth’s ear. “I love you.”

Her breath hitches, caught in her throat. Beth wants to shake her, wants to say  _ no you don’t, you don’t even know what love is, how could someone like you ever love someone like me _ ?

But she doesn’t. Beth just smiles, and leans into Addy’s ear and whispers back: “I love you too, Addy.”

***

They’re fourteen, two weeks into freshman year at Sutton Grove High, when Beth shows up to school in a bright blue Jeep that she isn’t old enough to legally drive yet. It’s an early birthday gift from Bert, who’s trying to make up for promising to leave his Mustang to his bitch stepdaughter Tacy, who’s still squirming down the halls of the middle school in a training bra.

Bert’s efforts to make his daughters love each other fall short. Beth hates her, it’s not hard to. She’s chipper and obnoxious and Beth wants to hit her over the head with a lead pipe one hundred percent of the time. 

When Bert comes around to invite Beth over to his new house for barbecues, Beth usually tells him to eat shit, but sometimes she tells him  _ and  _ Tacy to eat shit, if she’s in a particularly bad mood.

Beth rolls into the parking lot and parks the Jeep across two spots, and she spots Addy leaning against a tree, waiting for her.

“Oh my God, Beth!” she exclaims, boosting herself off the tree to where Beth is getting out of the Wrangler. “ _ This  _ is your new ride? I thought you were gonna show up on a bike.”

“Well, someone’s gotta drive you home after cheer practice,” Beth retorts, “since you could barely walk yesterday.”

“Shut up,” Addy says with a roll of her eyes and a shove to Beth’s side.

“You looked seriously bow-legged,” Beth continues as they meander towards the school doors. Her voice rises to a shout. “Like you’d just gotten fucked-”

Addy clamps a hand over Beth’s mouth, shutting her up once and for all. “You’re such a bitch. You know it was from all the bleacher sprints.”

Beth did know. Claire Ratajowski, senior captain of the Sutton Grove cheer squad, was beyond ruthless—she’d been making the girls sprint up and down the football bleachers, up and down, up and down until they were forced off the premises by the football team. Her legs had burned too, but she and Addy spent the entire summer running through the neighborhoods and scraping their hands up tumbling in Addy’s driveway. They wanted to be ready, and they were.

But as much as they had prepared for cheer, they could never prepare for Claire. She screams at every girl on the squad, but especially the freshmen, making quick work of terrorizing every last one of them.

Beth doesn’t flinch, though, and she instructs Addy to stay strong and stoic in her presence, to never show weakness. It’s an art that Beth has perfected. 

At Addy’s behest, they work their asses off. Stretching together before practice, extra reps of every set, classic tumbling passes in Beth’s backyard that turn into play fights more often than not. Beth feels herself getting stronger—in her arms, her abs, her legs—and she feels that churning feeling in her stomach grow stronger too, with every look in Addy’s direction. 

They cruise over to the Dairy Cream after practice, and Beth rebuffs RiRi and Brianna’s pleas to come too, because she wants Addy all to herself. As they walk out of the  gym, Addy eyes her knowingly, and Beth thinks it might be painfully obvious that she’s in love with her best friend.

Beth stays in the car, waiting in the alley beside the store until Addy returns with a cone of soft serve for each of them. They drive out to the abandoned shopping mall on the outskirts of town, singing along to the radio at the top of their lungs. In the massive, empty parking lot, Beth yanks the steering wheel to the left and leaves circular black marks all over the asphalt, only stopping when Abby cries out that she’s dizzy. 

Beth’s Jeep races down the main drag, and she takes her eyes off the road to admire the girl in the passenger seat. Addy’s hands are up, remnants of her vanilla ice cream dripped down her forearm, the wind in her hair as she sings along with her eyes closed. 

The seizing in her chest, the dryness in her mouth, the unbreakable smile —Beth tells herself it’s all part of the plan. The plan is, and has always been, to fall in love with Addy Hanlon. She convinces herself it was all intentional, because the truth is much scarier.

The truth being that Beth doesn’t know how or when she decided, but she knows she’d take a bullet for Addy. She can only hope that Addy would do the same for her.

***

They’re fifteen, watching  _ But I’m a Cheerleader  _ in Beth’s basement for the umpteenth time, when Beth tiptoes up the stairs and into the kitchen to raid the pantry. She’s got an armful of chips and 2 liter soda bottles when the sound of glass clinking makes her jump.

“Jesus, Mom!” she huffs when she turns around to find Lana pouring herself another glass of God-knows-what. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Better be careful with all that,” Lana gestures to the food Beth is holding. “Teenage girls need to watch their figure. Especially you cheerleaders.”

Her mother is drunk and probably high on a prescription that isn’t hers, but Beth still can’t discount her words. A nagging part of her brain tells her to say something to start an argument, but Lana can barely keep up a conversation right now, let alone formulate structured sentences. Beth shoves everything but the bottle of Coke back in the pantry and heads down the stairs without another word. She doesn’t think her mom would notice anyway.

“That’s all you got?” Addy frowns as Beth descends into the lounge, plopping down by Addy’s feet and reaching for the half-empty bottle of bourbon on the coffee table.

“You’ll survive,” Beth says as she pours bourbon into both their cups, followed by the Coke. 

Addy takes the drink and knocks it back, her throat rippling as she swallows. She’s in cheer shorts and a sports bra, laid out on the beat up couch with a hand behind her head.

In Beth’s mind, every inch of Addy’s body belongs to her. She longs to touch, to make Addy moan and writhe underneath her as she sucks dark marks into Addy’s skin, so that everyone knows she’s Beth’s. 

In reality, Beth downs her glass, because Addy  _ isn’t  _ hers, not in the way she craves. But Beth is shirtless too, and she can feel Addy’s gaze roaming the muscular expanse of her abdomen, up to her chest and down her toned arms. She can’t tell if Addy wants her, or if she’s seeing things because of how badly Beth wants Addy to want her. 

Beth straddles Addy’s hips and indulges—lets herself revel in the feeling of Addy’s skin growing hot as Beth slides her hands up Addy’s sides, and it’s heaven. 

“Beth,” Addy says, and it’s an honest-to-God whine. She’s squirming under Beth’s touch, legs parting as Beth begins to trail her hands down her toned thighs.

The movie is still on, faded into the background of Beth’s mind because Addy is on her back below her, writhing for Beth’s touch. She leans down, lower and lower until her lips are ghosting Addy’s, until something inside Beth tells her to stop.

She sits up and slides onto the floor, pouring a finger of dark liquor into her cup and dumps it down her throat, chasing away the ache between her legs and avoiding Addy’s eyes.

If Addy has anything to say, she keeps it to herself, keeping her eyes trained on the screen as Beth slides behind her and wraps an arm around Addy’s waist. 

They fall asleep like that, limbs tangled together, until Beth wakes up in the middle of the night and finds Addy facing her, her face hidden in Beth’s neck as her legs wrap around Beth’s midsection like a koala on a tree. She watches Addy’s chest rise and fall slowly and evenly, lips parted with a small smile.

Her skin is sticky with sweat, but Beth doesn’t dare move an inch. She elects to close her eyes and falls asleep with Addy’s rhythmic breath on the skin of her neck.

***

By Beth’s sixteenth birthday, she’s already been Top Girl for three months. She had strolled in on the first day of school, strong as ever after working out with Addy all summer. 

Sophomore year is Beth’s year. She asserts her ownership over the cheer squad, over the football boys who gawk at her during their practices, over all of Sutton Grove. She has the pulse of this town jammed under her thumb, thrumming at her mercy. 

Bert is useless, as usual.

Lana is drunk, as usual.

Addy is by Beth’s side every second, as usual.

And yet, something feels not quite right. Beth feels like she’s living in one of those pictures that looks normal upon first glance, but when you flip it over, all sorts of ugliness reveals itself from the shadows. She starts fights with Addy almost daily, and they burn like a gas-covered inferno for a moment before the flames dampen to cooling embers.

One night in February, Faith walks in on Beth and Addy taking sips from a bottle of Lana’s Grey Goose, and Addy gets grounded for a month. She goes to school, practice, then straight home. 

Beth can’t even be angry, because it’s kind of her fault, but the month drags on long and slow even with RiRi’s increased presence as her pseudo-lieutenant. She’s painfully aware of Addy’s absence at parties, in her passenger seat, on the rock at Lanvers Peak where Addy always sits. They talk at school, but it’s not enough.

Addy seems more irritated by the whole thing than Beth, huffing and pouting when RiRi sticks to Beth’s side like glue. Beth can see it, the frustration, and it makes her chest rumble in triumph. Even while grounded, Addy is still right where Beth wants her.

When the ban on seeing Beth is lifted, the first thing Addy does is tell Beth she’s not allowed to drink. The second thing she does is take a hit of the bong Beth is passing her, and the third thing she does is toss back a shot.

Beth invites all the cheer girls to her house for a party to celebrate the start of spring break, and she convinces Addy to tell her mom that the party is at RiRi’s, so she’ll be able to go. The party is in full swing, and she’s already lighting a joint and passing it to Emily when she sees Addy in the window. Beth hops off the couch and skips to the back door.

“Thought you might’ve bailed on me,” Beth says with a smirk.

“My mom insisted on dropping me off.” Addy walks past her and makes a beeline for the bar. “Ri, oh my God. I had to knock on your door and tell your mom I was supposed to pick you up, even though I knew you weren’t there.”

“Girl, what?” RiRi twists in her seat on the armchair to face Addy. “Why didn’t you just tell your mom the truth?”

Addy rolls her eyes and opens the liquor cabinet, looking to Beth for permission before she pulls out an old whiskey. “She wouldn’t have let me come.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Beth interjects, coming up behind Addy and wrapping both arms around her waist. She smiles as Addy softens in her arms and lays her hands over Beth’s, and Beth leaves gentle kisses up her neck.

“I’m glad I’m here too.”

***

They’re sixteen, and halfway through the summer, Beth and Addy pile onto a school bus with twenty other girls and set off for cheer camp in Mansfield. It takes a lot of begging on Addy’s part to convince her mother to let her go—she’s still mad about the vodka incident and has a clear distaste for Beth—but eventually Faith relents. 

It’s a four hour bus ride, and Addy spends it all leaning across the aisle talking to Cori and Brianna while Beth sulks with her head leaned against the window.

She’s just watching, silently fuming. The way Beth sees it, cheer camp is an opportunity. Two whole weeks, sharing a bunk bed and spending every second of the day together. They’ve gotten even closer in the past year, but Beth itches for more. Every time Beth’s bones scream for her to lean in and press her lips to Addy’s, something in her eyes seems off. Like there’s something lying dormant in Addy’s blood—something potent that will root against Beth—and she’s petrified that something she says or does wil wake it up. She’s scared of losing Addy to someone, one of the cheer girls, or worse: a boy. 

The way Beth sees it, cheer camp is her only opportunity to sink her teeth into Addy and never let go. But if this bus ride is any indication, she’s going to have a harder time with Addy than she had anticipated. 

When they arrive at their cabin, a duplex type on a long dirt road lined with identical buildings, Beth is proven thoroughly wrong.

“Beth, I call the top bunk!” Addy says as the girls file into the cabin, dropping her bag at the foot of a bunk bed in the back left corner.

Ordinarily, she’d huff and insist on taking the top bunk because  _ she’s  _ Top Girl, but this is Addy, and Beth would jump off the top bunk head first if she asked. 

There turns out to be no need for Beth to be angry, because she and Addy are inseparable.

Beth, Top Girl. Addy, her lieutenant. Just as it should be. 

There’s only one other team there at the same time, but they’re completely ruthless. A little rivalry breaks out between the Sutton Grove and Mount Victory squads, culminating in the Great Toilet Paper War of 2018, where both sets of girls launch rolls across the road onto the opposite cabin. Beth is the ringleader, of course, and everyone thinks it’s just because, well, she’s  _ Beth _ , but they couldn’t be more wrong.

When they first walked into the joint gym, the Mount Victory girls stretching on the other side of the mats, their Top Girl decided to make some loud mouthed comments about Addy’s race.

RiRi had to hold Beth back by the shoulders, otherwise she wouldn’t have let the bitch live. So instead, she makes it a squad thing, disguised as friendly competition between teenagers. 

On the third day of camp, Beth begs Addy to go on a walk with her after dinner, and they stumble upon a park with a playground that looks like it hasn’t been used in years. They giggle over a joint Beth smuggled to camp in her bra as they watch the sunset, legs dangling off the swings. Then it becomes a regular thing,  _ their  _ thing, just her and Addy savoring their lone joint on the swingset. 

After dinner on a Monday evening, the girls run screaming back to the cabin, rain pouring and making a muddy puddle out of the dirt road. Beth slows up behind Addy, who’s holding her arms out and spinning in circles.

“I love the rain!” Addy shouts up at the sky.

Ohio summers are sweltering, even after sundown, and the rain cools their skin just enough to keep them comfortable.

“Wanna go to the park?” Beth asks and before she knows it, Addy is grabbing her hand and tugging her in the direction of the playground. They have two hours before Coach Templeton takes attendance and announces “lights out,” and Beth plans to savor every minute of this.

Addy makes a beeline for the merry-go-round and even in the covers of darkness and water, Beth still feels her heart pound at the sight of her smile. 

Droplets splatter against the metal as Beth begins to push it, spinning Addy around and around, her fingers slipping on the cool metal bars. The sun has completely set, enveloping them in a comfortable obscurity—it makes Beth feel like she and Addy are the only people on this planet.

Her bracelet burns against the skin of her wrist, begging to be removed. When Addy is coming back around to face her for the millionth time, instead of pushing, Beth sticks a hand out and grabs the bar, slowing the merry-go-round to a stop.

They’re sixteen, drenched from head to toe, when Beth bends down and slips the Hamsa bracelet off her wrist and onto Addy’s. Beth’s heart swells in her chest knowing that Addy is protected now.

But there’s something different in Addy’s eyes, something Beth didn’t know she had longed to see until this moment. 

Beth is standing still, legs rooted to the woodchips below, when Addy stands up and leans in, pressing the softest of kisses to Beth’s lips, and she feels like her whole world is catching on fire and flooding with water at the same time. She feels Addy’s hand on her neck, the rain weighing down her hair and clothes, and Addy’s gaze is full of something Beth hopes and prays is love.

They meet in the middle this time, and the kiss is still cautious and gingerly—like they’re both afraid of doing too much while simultaneously trying to do everything—but an inferno blazes in the pit of Beth’s stomach as her tongue brushes Addy’s bottom lip. She feels like her lungs have deflated and sunk to the bottom of her chest cavity. Addy’s thumb strokes along her cheek as they pull apart and immediately fall together again, in a fit of smiles and giggles.

Beth holds Addy close to her chest, playing the moment over and over in her mind until she feels Addy shiver.

“Wanna go back?” Beth whispers into Addy’s neck, and she just nods.

They’re halfway to the cabin, swinging their interlaced hands back and forth, when Addy backs Beth up against the side of an empty cabin and kisses her hungrily. 

Beth kisses her back with all the fervor that’s been building inside her for years, threatening to burst every time she gets too close to Addy. But now, the subject of so many of Beth’s dreams is clinging desperately to the nape of her neck as her tongue slips into Addy’s mouth. Blinding heat rushes through her bones and weakens her at the knees, but she and Addy are breaking into smiles until they’re eventually not even kissing anymore, just bumping teeth and giggling like they’ve heard the funniest joke of all time. 

Somehow, Beth manages to push herself off the wall and get Addy walking towards their cabin, where they walk into deafening silence.

“Where have y’all been?” RiRi jumps from her bed, where she and Cori are playing Go Fish. “We thought you died, or got kidnapped by the Mount Victory girls.”

“Just went for a walk,” Addy shrugs and grabs two towels from the pile of folded clothes and the end of their bunk, handing one to Beth.

She focuses on drying her hair while Addy procures her pyjamas and ducks into the tiny cabin bathroom to change. Beth feels the squad’s watchful eyes on her, silently pleading for an elaboration, but she just shoots daggers at them. Nothing happened tonight that anyone but Beth needs to know about. 

Addy emerges from the bathroom and Beth immediately takes her place, hands shaking as she closes the door. She blames it on the chill running down her spine, but Beth knows that she’s just scared to meet Addy’s eyes, scared that the gleam she saw in her best friend’s eyes when they kissed will be gone.

When Beth is done, Coach Templeton is standing in the doorway, a closed umbrella at her side. Beth rushes to her bunk and finds Addy sprawled out on the bottom mattress, smiling like she’s waiting for Beth to climb in next to her. Coach takes attendance and bids them goodnight, flicking the lights off and closing the door. 

The girls immediately break out into hushed whispers all over the cabin, and normally Beth would plop herself in the middle of the room and suggest they play games or do dares, but Addy is sitting up and swinging her legs over the bed to mirror Beth’s stance.

“Are you okay?” Addy asks, resting her hand overtop of Beth’s.

A shiver runs down Beth’s spine at the contact, no matter how simple and innocent it is. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She turns to look at Addy, features barely visible in the darkness, illuminated only by the two windows streaming streetlights into the cabin. Even in the twilight, Beth makes out a gleam in Addy’s iris as she grins from ear to ear.

“Just making sure,” Addy replies, lacing their fingers together.

Beth can’t help but lean her head on Addy’s shoulder, and she immediately feels her best friend turn and leave a kiss on Beth’s forehead.

“Are you gonna sleep down here?” Beth asks.

“Maybe,” Addy says noncommittally. “Or you could come sleep up top.”

Beth grins, because she thinks she knows what it means. Their bunk seems to be taller than most, which means the top bunk is practically invisible to the other girls in the darkness. 

Addy doesn’t wait for an answer, just hops off the bed and climbs the ladder, Beth hot on her heels, until Addy is on her back and Beth is swinging one leg over her torso so her knees are on either side of Addy’s waist. She watches Addy do a quick scan of the room before looking at Beth again, and the position is so familiar yet so uncharted—it makes Beth feel a little dizzy.

It’s all she’s wanted to do for so long, so she does it—leans down and connects their lips, holding herself up with a hand beside Addy’s head. Beth kisses her soft and slow, afraid of breaking her, cradling Addy’s jaw in her hand like she’s holding fine china. 

Addy’s hands trail up her back, lifting Beth’s shirt and grazing the pale skin with her nails. It feels like she’s clinging to Beth for dear life, clutching her waist as their tongues dance.

When they separate, Beth has to muffle her laugh in Addy’s neck, because she can’t believe this is happening. She’s on top of Addy, kissing her, while she gently caresses the expanse of Beth’s torso. 

A place she longed to be, but never dreamed she would find herself.

She falls asleep tucked into Addy’s side, a protective arm slung over Beth’s waist, and Beth feels brick after brick tumble from her wall. The voice in her head screams for her to withdraw, to keep herself safe, but Beth can’t ignore how right it feels to be in Addy's arms, to be  _ hers. _

***

For the rest of camp, every chance she gets, Addy steals kisses from Beth.

In the gym bathroom during practice, behind the cabins while they walk from activity to activity, before and after dinner, but Beth’s favorite time is at night, when all the girls have fallen asleep, because it’s then that Addy worships her. 

One night, Addy flips them over and pins Beth on her back, and once she gets a taste for it, she doesn’t stop. Beth doesn’t even think about reclaiming that power, because the feeling of Addy’s lips on her neck, growing more hesitant as she moves lower, is absolute heaven.

They’re careful to remain unseen, but Beth feels lucky that the girls hardly bat an eye when she showers Addy with affection—to them, Beth and Addy are just best friends doing normal best friend stuff.

Beth wonders if they could ever be more.

On their last day of camp, Coach Templeton cancels practice and takes the squad to the Mansfield mall, which is massive compared to the old Sutton Grove shopping center. Beth drags Addy all over the building, in and out of dozens of stores. She feigns interest in a few items from each boutique, but really, she’s trying to tire out Cori, RiRi and Brianna, who’ve been stuck to them like glue all morning. At last, Cori shows interest in a jewelry store and enlists Bri and RiRi to go with her, after Beth calls the store tacky and announces her desire for a soft pretzel.

Beth does get her soft pretzel, and they duck into a photo booth to take silly pictures, but then Addy is taking her hand and leading her down a corridor, and Beth wonders where they’re going until she finds herself against an unpainted wall with Addy’s lips capturing hers. 

She has never seen Addy so ravenous—she’s raking her nails over Beth’s exposed stomach, muscles tightening as Addy touches them, and Beth can barely keep up with the pace she’s setting. It’s not long before they’re making out in earnest, all teeth and tongues and wandering hands.

“Oh, there you guys are, I was- woah!” a voice echoes down the corridor.

Addy tears herself away from Beth at the speed of light, and Beth has to center herself to avoid feeling hurt by the ease of the action.

RiRi is standing at the mouth of the hallway, jaw dropped to the floor. Beth knows she saw everything, it’s obvious by the look on her face. She leaves Addy behind, striding towards RiRi until she’s right up in her face.

“You will not tell another  _ soul  _ what you just saw,” Beth says as she jabs a finger into RiRi’s sternum. “Got it?”

RiRi gulps, eyes wide. “Got it,” she says and turns on her heel, scampering away. 

After RiRi is completely out of sight, Beth turns around, but she’s terrified of what she’ll find.

“You really think she’ll stay quiet?” Addy asks, and her voice is shy but Beth can’t find any fear in her expression.

“If she knows what’s good for her,” Beth replies, and really, they’re lucky it was RiRi who saw them kissing. If it had been anyone else, the whole squad would know by lunchtime, but RiRi has always shown tremendous allegiance to Beth, and she doesn’t see her spilling the beans. 

But the reality sinks in—the reality that they got caught, and now Addy would be undoubtedly reluctant to continue—and Beth feels her stomach twist in fear. She’s come so far, she  _ can’t  _ lose Addy now.

“Hey.” Addy snaps her fingers in Beth’s face, breaking her out of her trance.

Beth shakes her head, realizing that Addy’s been talking. “What?”

“I asked if you were ready to go,” Addy repeats. “We’ve gotta be back on the bus in,” she pulls out her phone, “four minutes.” Addy doesn’t wait for her, just starts walking down the hall, and Beth has to run after her and grab her wrist as they emerge into the public.

“Are you okay?” Beth asks, and she doesn’t like the look Addy is giving her. She seems uneasy, jarred by the events of the hallway, and Beth has no idea how to fix it.

“Yeah, m’fine,” Addy mumbles, avoiding Beth’s eyes. “Just don’t wanna be late.”

Beth doesn’t push it, because she can tell Addy is in one of those moods where a thousand things are happening in her brain and talking to her will only make her feel worse. Addy is stressed out, and Beth just needs to leave her alone. 

Leaving Addy alone is easier said than done, though, because everyone notices when Addy boards the bus and plops down next to RiRi, leaving Beth to sit next to Cori across the aisle. She doesn’t take her eyes off her girl the entire way home, heavy metal blaring in her ears as she concentrates on not ripping out RiRi’s esophagus for sitting so close to Addy. 

For four hours, she watches Addy and RiRi giggle and color each other’s nails with Sharpie, and Beth can feel her girl slipping away.

It doesn’t help that when they pull into the parking lot of Sutton Grove High School, Bert is leaning against his Mustang and waving her over. They’re early, so Addy’s mom isn’t there yet, which means Addy follows Beth over to her father’s car.

“Beth Ann!” he hollers. “How are you? And Addy, it’s nice to see you.”  
“I was fantastic until right about now,” Beth replies with an eyeroll, inspecting her cuticles.

“Nice to see you too, Mr. Cassidy,” Addy says. Always the picture of politeness. Beth longs to draw devilish things from that mouth.

“Well, I’m here to take you home so that you can pack a bag,” Bert says. 

“A bag? What the hell do I need a bag for?”

“We’re going on vacation!” Bert announces like Beth is supposed to like what she hears. “A nice, family trip to the Bahamas.”

Everything sounds like she’s underwater. There’s only two weeks until the first day of junior year, and Beth had planned to spend every minute kissing Addy every which way.

“For how long?” Addy asks when Beth’s answer never comes.

“Just a week, but we need to hurry,” Bert says as he rushes to open the passenger side door. “Melanie and Tacy are waiting.”

Beth is about ready to scream until her blood vessels pop, but there’s a gentle hand on her shoulder before she has the chance.

“It’s only a week,” Addy soothes, her voice smooth and velvety like maple syrup. “It’ll fly by. Before you know it, we’ll be back to doing donuts in the parking lot and partying at Lanvers.”

Even after sitting on a school bus for hours on end, Addy is still so goddamn beautiful, and Beth wants to say  _ fuck it  _ and kiss her right here in front of everyone. She settles for a hug, burying her face in Addy’s neck. 

“I’m gonna miss you,” she whispers, resigning herself to reality because Beth doesn’t have the energy to try to get out of this trip. 

“I’m gonna miss you too,” Addy replies, and Beth knows it’s true because Addy’s cheeks are streaked with tears. 

The sight makes her blood bubble within her veins, and it breaks Beth’s heart at the same time. She reaches up to wipe the tears away, leaves the lightest of kisses on Addy’s cheek and turns away, trudging to her father’s car without looking back.

Beth does look back, while they’re tearing down the road, and Addy waves, but she’s still crying and Beth wants to fucking kill her father for making Addy sad. 

Every minute of the trip is insufferable, except for the occasional phone calls with Addy. She barely says a word to anyone the entire time, only picking fights with Tacy and reiterating to her father how much she does not want to be there.

The island is stunning, pearly white sand and crisp blue water, and Beth keeps thinking about how much more fun she’d be having if Addy was here. She thinks about Addy on the beach, in the water, at dinner, everywhere. Beth closes her eyes in the shower and imagines Addy there, getting off to the image of Addy on her knees with her head between Beth’s thighs.

It’s all so beautiful, but  Beth can’t enjoy it because Addy isn’t there —s he’s back in Sutton Grove  _ alone _ , and it makes her anxious. The last thing Beth wants is to come back to a version of Addy who’s had too much time to think about their tiny town and what it all means.

She texts Addy from the airport, and when Bert pulls into his driveway across the street from his old house, Beth can’t get out fast enough because Addy is sitting on her front step, waiting for her. 

Beth tries to figure out if anything has changed since they last saw each other, but it turns out that she’s returned to a version of Addy who’s been thinking about nothing but cheer. Beth wants to go out to Lanvers Peak while they still have daylight to work with—she’s been daydreaming about kissing Addy on the rocks all week—but Addy insists they practice.

“The season starts in a week, we’ve gotta stay in shape!” Addy says as they walk around the house into the backyard.

“We’re not gonna lose all our skills in a week, Hanlon,” Beth replies, leaning her suitcase against the house before launching into a back handspring. “See? It’s been a week since I tumbled, and I’ve still got it.”

But Addy isn’t budging, despite Beth’s show and tell, so Beth relents and they practice back tucks until it’s dark outside.

A day later, they’re in Addy’s room after a slightly-awkward dinner with Faith before she left for the night shift. Beth felt the compulsion to make Addy’s mom like her again, and she thought it a mildly positive attempt.

Addy is standing by her dresser with a Bluetooth speaker in her hand, clad in Nike shorts and the pale blue shirt from cheer camp. A smooth melody fills the room, and Addy sets the speaker down and leans on the foot of the bed.

Back against the pillows, Beth drinks her in. Her eyes trail up toned legs to the swell of Addy’s ass, admiring the view with her bottom lip drawn between her teeth.

“What are you looking at?” Addy asks, but the blush in her cheeks makes it clear that she knows  _ exactly _ what Beth is looking at.

“You,” Beth answers simply, leaning up on her hands. She crooks a finger at Addy, summoning her onto the bed, and her girl obliges, crawling up to Beth until she’s snug in the space between Beth’s legs.

She reaches a hand up to Addy’s neck and kisses her, fingers twirling the flyaways at Addy’s nape as she parts her lips to deepen the kiss.

Addy leans forward until she’s all the way on top, but despite the rush of heat to Beth’s center, she flips Addy onto her back and immediately captures her lips, muffling the surprised gasp she lets out.

This isn’t Beth’s first rodeo, but she knows Addy has never been with anyone, and she wants to make Addy see stars. She kisses along Addy’s neck, sucking hard at the skin and soothing it with her tongue while she brings her thigh up to press between Addy’s legs.

“Can I?” Beth asks, toying with the hem of Addy’s shirt.

Addy nods almost frantically, so Beth lifts the shirt up and over her head, tossing it to the floor and exploring the newly exposed skin. She’s been here before, feeling Addy up while she straddles her hips, but the air in the room is thick and charged with emotion in a way Beth has never felt before. 

Before Beth can even really  _ touch  _ her, Addy is sitting up and tugging off her sports bra, reaching for Beth’s crop top next. Now they’re both sitting, Beth in her lap with her legs wrapped around Addy’s torso, and Beth thinks she might cry—it’s so intimate, chest to chest with Addy as her best friend reaches for the clasp of her bra and undoes it.

Her head tosses back with a moan when she feels Addy’s hands on her breasts, toying with her nipples as she kisses Beth’s neck. Beth cranes her neck to expose more skin, reveling in the feeling of teeth scraping the flesh—the fact that she knows Addy is going to leave marks makes it even hotter. She loses herself in the feeling for too long, but eventually Beth pushes Addy back on the bed by the shoulders and immediately takes a nipple into her mouth, laving her tongue over the stiff peak after a teasing scrape of her teeth before giving its twin the same attention. 

“Fuck, Beth,” Addy whines, tangling a hand in Beth’s chestnut locs. Her hips buck into Beth’s thigh when she lifts it to Addy’s center, and Beth swears she can feel dampness through the fabric of Addy’s shorts.

She can’t bear to wait any longer, so Beth slides down the bed and holds the elastic of Addy’s shorts, looking to her for permission. 

In lieu of an answer, Addy lifts her hips, and Beth pulls her shorts and underwear off in one swift motion. Addy’s legs part, feet planted on either side of the bed, and Beth wants to pinch herself to make sure this is real.

Beth feels intoxicated in the best way as she runs her hands along Addy’s inner thighs, marvelling at the wetness dripping off Addy’s cunt.

“Beth,” Addy says, and it’s a plea. The skin of her neck and face is flushed, and Beth smiles triumphantly at the dark purple marks forming along Addy’s neck.

She starts at Addy’s left knee, sucking marks into her thigh—marks only Addy will see that will make her remember how Beth made her feel, make her remember who she belongs to. Beth lines her legs with hickeys until Addy is a writhing mess, her wetness staining the sheet below. She’s salivating when she leans down and swipes her tongue through Addy’s folds, tasting her for the first time, and it’s heavenly.

A loud moan tears through Addy’s throat, and Beth thanks the stars for night shifts, because she  _ needs  _ to hear more of Addy.

Beth laps at her cunt in slow strokes, drinking her in and bringing a hand up to tease Addy’s clit. She’s barely dipped her tongue inside when Addy’s hips cant up and her thighs close around Beth’s head, and Beth has to hold Addy against the bed so she can bury her tongue in Addy’s cunt. The taste of Addy from the source is addicting, and Beth moans into Addy’s center as it coats her tongue.

Addy’s moans, high-pitched and emphatic, are like music to Beth’s ears, and she wishes this whole thing were on video—for her to watch and relive whenever she wanted. Beth moves to suck on Addy’s clit, easily slipping two fingers inside and curling them.

“Shit, oh my God,” Addy curses as the pads of Beth’s fingers find her g-spot. 

The pace of her fingers is punishing, curling in Addy’s tight channel on every downstroke, but Beth keeps the pressure of her mouth on Addy’s clit light, because she’s always needed both to come and she figures Addy probably isn’t much different.

“Fuck, Beth, I need-” Addy chokes out, eyes fluttering shut as she grips Beth’s hair tight enough that she could rip it all out if she wanted to. Beth can’t even pretend that she’d care.

“Look at me,” Beth orders and Addy’s eyes shoot open at the command. She wraps her lips around Addy’s clit and  _ sucks _ , speeding up her fingers until Addy is falling apart beneath her, legs shaking as Beth licks up every last drop, watching her come and burning the image into her brain.

Beth reluctantly kisses up Addy’s torso, determined to make Addy come in her mouth again if it’s the last thing she does. 

But right now Addy is sitting up and pulling Beth into her lap, the same position they’d been in before, and Beth shimmies out of her shorts when she feels Addy tug at them.

“I’ll be honest, I have no clue what to do,” Addy says, cheeks burning red.

“I- um… I can show you, if you want,” Beth replies, and she barely recognizes the sound of her own voice. Here, naked on Addy’s lap offering to talk her through sex, Beth feels more shy than she ever has. 

But Addy is nodding eagerly, looking up at her with wide eyes and a scintillating smile, and Beth is so fucking in love with this girl.

“What you were doing before was good,” Beth starts, lifting Addy’s hand to her breast. “And then you can-” She reaches for Addy’s other hand and brings it down to her pussy, trailing both their fingers through wetness.

“Like that?” Addy asks, rubbing slow circles on Beth’s clit.

“Yeah,” she moans, rocking her hips into Addy’s touch, chasing the pressure that’s sending shivers down her spine. Addy has barely touched her and she’s already dripping, and Beth thinks that the whole concept of Addy fucking her is what’s getting her so worked up. She reaches for Addy’s hand again and moves it lower, wordlessly asking for her fingers.

Addy tentatively sinks one finger into Beth and kisses her jaw softly, and the mix of tenderness and pleasure is enough to make Beth moan so loud that it echoes off the walls.

“Fuck, Addy, that’s it,” she encourages, lifting her hips and lowering them onto Addy’s hand. “More, I need-” Beth cuts herself off with a groan as Addy adds another finger and speeds up, staring up at Beth like she’s a goddess. 

Addy leans down and swipes her tongue over Beth’s nipple, but she huffs in frustration due to the poor angle, and Beth yelps when Addy turns her around and lays her against the pillows, never slowing the pumping of her fingers into Beth’s slick channel. 

The new angle means Addy’s fingers are bumping Beth’s g-spot, and the added sensation of Addy’s mouth on her tits is too much for her to handle.

“Fuck, Addy, I’m-” she cries out as she clutches the bedsheets, walls fluttering around Addy’s fingers as she comes, white spots dancing behind her eyes. Beth is just catching her breath, whining at the loss of Addy’s fingers, when she feels Addy’s tongue lapping tentatively at her sensitive cunt. Her hands fly to Addy’s hair, holding her head in place as she rocks her hips into Addy’s mouth.

“Fuck, Addy, you’re so good,” she moans as Addy’s tongue slips inside her, and the moan she answers with reverberates through Beth’s body like she’s some sort of amplifier. “Such a good girl.” Her second orgasm crashes into her embarrassingly fast, and she’s kind of disappointed she didn’t get to feel Addy’s mouth for longer.

“Was that, um…” Addy trails off, sitting up. “Was that okay?”

Beth can’t help but laugh at how adorable she looks, coy and bashful as if Beth’s slick isn’t dripping down her chin. “Better than okay,” she says, crawling to Addy and capturing her lips to taste herself on Addy’s tongue. “That was amazing. You’re amazing.”

“Beth, I-” Addy leans back to look at her. “I love you.”

Everything on her face tells Beth that it’s the truth, that she means it.  _ Addy loves me. _ She connects their lips in a searing kiss, channeling all her love into the act, so that Addy can feel it.

She can barely breathe, but it feels  _ so  _ good to be with Addy like this, to let her in, so Beth swallows her fears and says, “I love you too.”

***

When news about their new cheer coach breaks, Beth has a harrowing realization. She realizes that she had been right all along: cheer camp had been an opportunity to make Addy hers once and for all, and Beth hadn’t sealed the deal. She knows this because Addy is already obsessed with the mere idea of Coach Colette French, despite Beth’s many dismissals of her porn-star name and likely washed up cheer skills.

They’re sixteen, standing in the parking lot of the school on the morning of their first day as juniors, when Coach French emerges from her Infiniti coupe and struts towards the front door. Addy is watching her, eyes never leaving the swinging blond hair and petite figure, and Beth is watching Addy.

When she was ten and her parents got divorced, Beth had an eerie feeling that somehow, she would end up losing her best friend.

When she’s sixteen, Beth feels like an idiot, because she doesn’t even see it coming.

***

Beth hates a lot of people. Tacy, her father, the pervy Calculus teacher who tried to grab her ass in the hallway. She hates a lot of people, but Beth has never hated someone quite as much as Colette fucking French.

She’s already testing Beth on day one, insisting that she isn’t Top Girl anymore and announcing that the title is up for grabs. 

Beth lets her do it, which makes her feel weak, and then Coach lets  _ Tacy  _ fly even though she nearly kills her bases on the way down. She can’t stand it, but that isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is that she has Addy eating out of her hand after one day. 

Every single one of the girls falls for her tricks, only denouncing her at Beth’s behest. For the first time ever, she feels her control over the squad slipping away. When she and Coach square up over something—sometimes phones, sometimes Tacy—it’s like two lionesses fighting over a mate, and Beth thinks that’s  _ exactly  _ what’s happening, because she can see Coach French sinking her teeth into Addy’s neck from all the way across the gym. 

Addy is  _ hers _ , the lieutenant to Beth’s Top Girl, but every time she says it, it becomes less and less true. 

For the first three weeks of school, Beth feels completely numb. She chases feeling in shot glasses and bongs, but everything is dull and gray like it always is when Addy isn’t around. Even RiRi’s increased presence by her side does nothing to liven up her days. Beth knows what’s missing, and she knows where it is, too—between Colette French’s legs. 

She’s desperate for control, and she fights for it; she fights so damn hard, but it eludes her.

Then this horrible trend starts where all of the girls go to Coach’s house for parties after practice. Addy tries to convince Beth to attend, but after three rebuffed attempts, she gives up.

Beth tries to pretend her heart doesn’t throb when Addy stops asking. 

After a terrible practice where Tacy pops Beth’s bad shoulder out of place, Beth avoids yet another party at Coach’s and elects to sulk at home. She’s hurting in more ways than one, but her shoulder isn’t the worst of it. Beth is half asleep on the couch when she spots Addy coming down the steps.

It’s the first night Beth feels something in weeks. She feels Addy’s slick hands working the knots out of her back, massaging her bruised thighs, until lust escalates the situation and Addy is on her knees bringing Beth to orgasm with her mouth.

When she wakes, there’s a blanket over her naked body that wasn’t there before, and Addy is nowhere to be found. Beth scoffs, because she isn’t surprised that Addy is gone, but she  _ is  _ surprised at how much her gut hurts, like she’s been betrayed.

In a way, she has been, because Addy told her once that she would never be alone, and yet here Beth is.

***

Her control over the cheer squad was gone the moment Coach French took over the squad, but Beth’s grip on Sutton Grove as a whole is still suffocating, until it isn’t.

Until she wakes up after a party at the Playland Hotel with teeth marks in her tongue and bruises covering her body.

She doesn’t remember much, but she doesn’t need every detail to know what happened. One second she’s drinking with her friends, the next, Kurtz is dragging her to the back of his car even though she can barely walk.

Addy asks her if something happened, and she says no—partly because she doesn’t think Addy really cares, and partly because if she does tell her and Addy abandons her for Coach again, Beth seriously doesn’t think she’ll recover.

But even though she says no, tells Addy nothing happened, she’s still her best friend, and Beth expects her to notice. She’s silently screaming, dying inside, but Addy is blinded by her massive heart eyes for that bitch French. Beth realizes that if all it takes is a hot blonde to distract Addy, maybe she never cared about Beth at all. 

The thought is virulent in Beth’s brain, eating at her until it consumes her every waking moment. Addy doesn’t care about her. She never did. Addy doesn’t love her. She never did. 

After Kurtz, Beth barely has the motivation to get out of bed, but she can’t give him the satisfaction. She fashions a mask, pretends like nothing happened, and continues her reign of terror over the halls of Sutton Grove High. But the rush that comes from the control is so fleeting, like a drug that Beth has built up a tolerance for, and the only thing stronger lies just out of her reach, close enough to touch but still too far away to grab.

She watches Addy go home with Coach after practice, wants to snap the bitch’s neck for manipulating her girl like that, because that  _ is  _ what Coach is doing, even if Addy doesn’t see it. 

When they go to Columbus for Regionals, Beth feels a seedling of hope that things might be okay again root itself inside her, and it only grows when Addy does all the right things—shares a room with her, promises one-on-one time with Beth—limbs of the sapling sending Beth’s walls tumbling down, leaving her raw and exposed.

But she comes back to the room after her family dinner to find it empty, the AC blasting. Her texts to Addy go unanswered, and Beth soon realizes it’s because her phone is still in the room. When she sees the screen saver, Beth wants to throw up.

She falls asleep on the floor wrapped up in the duvet, and she can’t believe she ever thought things would be okay.

Beth is almost seventeen when she tells Addy that she fell in love with her, begs Addy to choose her, asks her what Coach has that she doesn’t.

And when Addy tells her that Coach  _ isn’t  _ her, spits the words in her face like venom, Beth gets to work rebuilding her walls, because she can’t believe she ever let Addy break her.

They’re almost seventeen, and things will never be the same. 

**Author's Note:**

> i hope y'all liked this one! let me know what you thought in the comments. i hope you're all staying safe during this crazy time <3
> 
> follow me on twitter! @olivigay
> 
> and on tumblr! @sentientaltype


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